Underlying inflation remains contained!

Good news everyone! The underlying rate of inflation remains contained! That's the story you're likely to hear for the rest of the day from portions of the mainstream media after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that overall inflation rose 0.7 percent in May, but the all-important core rate of inflation rose only 0.1 percent.

Here's what the headline looked like at CBS MarketWatch where the result for core inflation got both the headline and the lead in the story. It's as if core inflation is the "real" inflation and the "excluding food and energy" qualifier along with the overall rate of inflation is some kind of a nuisance.

The online version of the Wall Street Journal gives the overall rate of inflation top billing but quickly dismisses its importance, promptly getting to the good news that core inflation is "under wraps". As in, don't worry about the cost of your last fill-up, owners' equivalent rent only rose 0.1 percent last month.


At Yahoo! Finance, getting their feed from the Associated Press, the outlook is not nearly as rosy - core inflation gets nary a mention until the third paragraph.

Interestingly, a quick search on "Martin Crutsinger" (who's name sounded familiar when it was first spotted above) yields the following story in position number two:

Oh Dear! It looks like the overall inflation vs. core inflation debate might be influenced somehow by one's political viewpoint ...

Does inflation reporting have to be this hard?

More in a little while - so far, the MSM reporting of today's CPI report is a bit hard to get past.